Storm warning

In the second world war, it defended Britain from enemy bombers. In the 60s, it was declared an independent principality, an unknown major its leader. Now the former RAF platform has become unwittingly involved in an international smuggling ring. Will Woodward on the strange past, fraught present and uncertain future of Sealand

Storm warning

In the second world war, it defended Britain from enemy bombers. In the 60s, it was declared an independent principality, an unknown major its leader. Now the former RAF platform has become unwittingly involved in an international smuggling ring. Will Woodward on the strange past, fraught present and uncertain future of Sealand

Monday 27 March 2000 20.22 EST
First published on Monday 27 March 2000 20.22 EST

For almost 33 years the principality of Sealand has appeared to be an eccentric English joke. In 1966 businessman and former army major Roy Bates took a fancy to a disused gun tower seven miles off the Suffolk coast. It measured 140m by 40m and had seen little action since enemy planes flew over on their way to bombing the capital. This, he thought, was just the place to establish his kingdom - or, to be more precise, his principality. He annexed the metal structure, originally known as Roughs Tower, and immediately installed himself as Prince Roy and his wife, a former beauty queen, as Princess Joan.

Then they set about enjoying themselves. They furnished the tower, issued their own stamps and coins (bearing the head of Princess Joan), and passports. They live there part of the time - the rest of the year they live down the coast in Westcliff-on-Sea - but some of their friends live on the tower permanently to guard it. It hasn't exactly been a quiet life - there was a failed attempt to set up a pirate radio station, the acquisition of the nation's largest inshore fishing fleet, an attempted invasion by navy helicopters, an attempt by German and Dutch armed raiders to kidnap their son and a strange link to the murder of Gianni Versace. But now they are falling victim to a multimillion-pound fraud that police believe is being carried out over the internet.

Somewhat ironically, the prince and princess are on holiday in Spain, travelling incognito as Mr and Mrs Bates, while the Spanish civil guard is investigating a gang that is involved in arms trafficking, drug smuggling and money laundering - all of which, it seems, is being conducted with fake passports supposedly issued by the Principality of Sealand.

Members of the family are not the subject of this investigation and, says Michael Bates, Prince Roy's son, are completely innocent. His father had a visit from a detective from the serious fraud squad, acting for Interpol, last year, but that was very polite and amicable.

"There is nobody more anti-drugs than my old man," says Bates, "and we have never done any money laundering. I am not saying we couldn't be used as a tax haven but we have never done anything like that."

Tap "Principality of Sealand" into your internet keyboard and chances are two sites will appear prominently. One, at www.fruitsofthesea.demon.co.uk/sealand, is a site created by Michael Bates. Official. It tells you how the family's "rights and claims of sovereignty over the island and its territorial waters have been ratified time after time over the intervening years by national courts and leading international jurists".

But there is a second website: the "official website of the Principality of Sealand", at www.principality-sealand.net. This site has a plausible explanation of the taking over of the island, features pictures of Prince Roy and his family, and is full of convincing officialese.

"The existence of the Principality of Sealand as a state and the 'de facto' recognition of it as a state was not only confirmed by expert opinions of renowned experts... but also by numerous legal acts undertaken by other states."

True enough, as far as the family is concerned. But, says the family, the site is a fake. When you run a state that officially doesn't exist, it is hard to argue that someone is pretending to be you - but this is what the Spanish police are investigating.

Princess Joan, 70, and Prince Roy, 78, are mystified by the latest investigation. But they are having a fine old time in a nice hotel on the Costa del Sol, where the former Miss Joan Collins from Essex does still think of herself as royalty. "Would you ask the same question of Princess Grace of Monaco?" she scolds.

"We declared an independent state and I thought if I had to have a title I couldn't think of a nicer one."

They have spent millions on the island, she says, since the idea first came up during a spot of pub talk with her daring husband. People have suggested various schemes involving off-shore business schemes, but nothing came of them. "Unless there was something that comes to the aid of England, we wouldn't do it. There is no way we would ever do anything anti-British. My family fought for generations. I am always English, no matter what. But I have dual nationality."

The prince calls his wife "the boss", and they say they are as blissfully happy as when they got married, 51 years ago, within three months of meeting each other at a dance. And he loves his principality: "Listen old boy, I like a bit of adventure. It's the old British tradition. Maybe Britain's changed, but there's a lot of us still about. We're very vulnerable - we are the smallest state in the world. We are wide open for criticism, but we are very careful; we don't want to do anything wrong."

He reckons someone got hold of one of his passports and copied it to make huge numbers of forgeries. "We have issued passports - several hundred. We have given them to people who work for us or people who need them. But we have never given passports [for] illegal entry. "

By contrast, the "fake" website under investigation says "the Principality of Sealand has approximately 160,000 citizens". In parts of the Spanish version, it reads, "160,000 inhabitants ", quite difficult on an island 932 yards square.

"The population of the Principality of Sealand is primarily made up of businessmen. They live in the countries they originate from," the unofficial site says. "From a political point of view, a micro-state like the Princi pality of Sealand is not very influential," it concedes. "This is why the government of the Principality of Sealand founded the Sealand International Business Foundation (SIBF) as an instrument to efficiently safeguard the economic interests of the citizens organised in its network.

"Irrespective of his/her origin, race and his/her religion, anyone can become a citizen of the Principality if he is prepared to make use of his/her talents to establish and boost the acceptance of an emerging state."

In the Spanish-language version of the site, respondents are asked to say what they are interested in: citizenship, ID cards, passports or driving licences. According to investigators from the civil guard, Spain's paramilitary police force, yesterday, those privileges are on offer to anyone willing to pay between £5,500 and £35,000 for a range of documents that includes titles, academic degrees and full Principality of Sealand diplomatic passports.

They allege that a Spaniard from the southern province of Almeria, Francisco Trujillo Ruiz, is presenting himself as the "Prince Regent of Sealand". He drives around Madrid with diplomatic number plates and refers to his office, in a luxury building on Calle Serrano, one of the smartest streets in Madrid, as Sealand's embassy.

The Spanish foreign ministry, like the British government, takes quite a different view. It does not recognise passports issued by the Principality of Sealand and says they do not comply with criteria laid down by the Schengen Treaty for international documents. But according to the investigation, several countries have been taken in by "ambassadors" who claim to represent Sealand and use their prestige in business deals.

The embassies of Gabon, Paraguay, Nepal, Syria, Haiti, Liberia, Honduras, Jamaica, Pakistan, Cyprus, Ethiopia, Jordan and Turkey all responded to requests for information from Sealand representatives who claim to be preparing lucrative investments in those countries.

Access to other Sealand privileges does not come cheap. There is a basic "goodwill" charge of £300 for the first contact. Membership of "Mare Libertas", described as Sealand's exclusive international business foundation, costs £25,000. Its main project was described as the construction of a micro-city in Sealand, with ports, sports com plexes, a medical centre, a cathedral, heliports and universities.

Trujillo Ruiz's team all hold "official" titles. His legal adviser is described as the "secretary general of the state", and there is a "foreign affairs minister" and a "chief political adviser". The civil guard is investigating the group, which appears to be "an organised crime ring" concentrating its activities on falsification and swindling. Documents supposedly issued by Sealand have been passed to investigating magistrates, who will decide whether to order arrests.

This is not the first time that passports from Sealand have found their way into the news. One was found on the killer of Gianni Versace, Andrew Cunanan, and he was said to have a car with Sealand diplomatic plates. In 1997 forged Sealand passports were used to launder drug money in Slovenia, and there were reports that 4,000 forged passports were sold at £1,000 a head before China's takeover of Hong Kong. People involved in an illegal pyramid-selling scheme in eastern Europe had Sealand papers; one had border stamps from Libya, Iraq and Iran.

This hardly seems to be Prince Roy's fault, but it is easy to see how it happens. Official-looking, plausible papers from the Principality of Sealand may raise eyebrows in Britain but, reckon the authorities, it might not attract so much suspicion in new or faraway countries that, while aware that there are tax havens off the British coast, don't necessarily know the details.

Michael Bates says he wrote to the Spanish website, asking them to leave his father's principality alone. Someone replied, citing connections with the good name of King Juan Carlos and paying tribute to the Sealanders. "He said he'd written a book on Sealand," says Bates, which may explain the pictures on the site, "but I'm thinking, what the hell is this all about. If you want, I'll go to Spain to confront them. I'd be only too happy to. They are doing us a dreadful disservice."

Meanwhile, back on Sealand, people are doing very nicely, thank you. It has electricity, television, double-glazing in the 75ft towers.

"It's not a palace, but it's not too bad," says Michael Bates. There are ongoing talks about annexing more land, maybe within the next couple of years, and even setting up a casino.

Though Sealand is not recognised by the British government, the authorities don't make life too difficult, he says. Ashore, he runs a shellfish business in Leigh-on-Sea, and says he has one of only 14 licences in the Thames estuary to farm cockles. He plans to keep Sealand going, even when his parents die. The principality has seen its way through other crises and it will see its way through this one.

There have been worse moments. In 1967, when the Ministry of Defence tried to evict them, sending out navy helicopters and the Royal Maritime auxiliary vessel Golden Eye for what Prince Roy liked to call the Battle of Roughs Tower, gunshots and molotov cocktails were fired back - as a "warning". Prince Roy was hauled to court, but a judge ruled that the platform was outside the three-mile limit of territorial waters, making the prince immune from his order.

In 1978, German and Dutch raiders - businessmen - took over the tower in a KLM helicopter in a wrangle with Prince Roy involving several million deutschmarks. They kidnapped Michael and took him to the Netherlands.

But within days Prince Roy had recaptured the island, sliding down 100ft ropes from a helicopter, fighting the invaders and capturing one of the raiders in turn. Gernot Putz, a 34-year-old German lawyer who had been a Sealand passport holder, was charged with treason and held for seven weeks. He received a "pardon".

But Michael Bates and his family are sanguine about such things. The trouble with independent states, he says, is that they are always at risk from a coup d'état. "If you are your own defence, you have got nobody to bleat to."